14 ms·

What does "1.5+" mean in the context of being a great engineer?

by chris_j 14y ago

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
michaelochurch, like a few others, has his own meme on HN - he has a well received blog post describing it in detail, (http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajectory-of-a-software-engineer-and-where-it-all-goes-wrong/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajector...) Essentially he rates programmers on (IIRR) a 0-3 scale of impact - so a 1.0 developer neither adds nor subtracts to the overall quality of the code base, and a 3.0 invents C and Unix. This quote is something we should all measure ourselves against - honestly and painfully at times. 1.4 to 1.6: Solid adder: well above-average (top 10%) by software-industry standards, but average (at 5-10 years’ experience) in the context of the best companies (e.g. elite startups, Google, and research divisions of IBM). Can be trusted to independently solve most problems in an elegant and maintainable way. Engineer can make reasonable time estimates and communicate in both business and technical terms with management as well as other engineers. Can handle small levels of deadline/delivery responsibility and should be encouraged to participate in architectural decisions (“multiplier” concerns). Technical leadership non-urgent projects is a serious possibility. That's average base level in my book. And sometimes I mess up on those too. (Communication being a big bug bear for me)
- chris_j 14y ago
  Thanks very much for the information; I had completely missed that particular meme until now.
- Kiro 14y ago
  I'm a PHP developer who often uses w3schools as reference. What score do I get?
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    I don't know. You are on HN so it's a good guess its productive. You know enough to know PhP and w3schools indicates there is more to learn and so I would guess you are on the right path As for everything else - I don't know till I read your code
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    No idea, but there are certain semi-discrete barriers that I've noticed: 0.8: difficulty with fundamentals. There are people out there who just can't get code to compile, or struggle with core concepts like pointers and recursion. 1.2: corporate work frontier. Large "commodity programmer" teams tend to focus more on creating a home (slight, reliable, adder status) for a large number of mediocre players than on developing talent. Most jobs won't take you far beyond 1.1-1.2; even the team leads in most corporate shops tend to be only 1.3-1.4. 1.8: escalating difficulty of getting appropriate projects. You can get to 1.5, 1.6 through side projects, book reading, and exploration in your spare hours. It's quite rare, however, that people get to 2.0 without having the (very uncommon) opportunity to do 2.0+ level work full-time. To push beyond 1.8, you need to get more autonomy in your job than most programmers ever have.

What does "1.5+" mean in the context of being a great engineer?

by chris_j 14y ago

What does "1.5+" mean in the context of being a great engineer?

michaelochurch, like a few others, has his own meme on HN - he has a well received blog post describing it in detail, (http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajectory-of-a-software-engineer-and-where-it-all-goes-wrong/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajector...) Essentially he rates programmers on (IIRR) a 0-3 scale of impact - so a 1.0 developer neither adds nor subtracts to the overall quality of the code base, and a 3.0 invents C and Unix. This quote is something we should all measure ourselves against - honestly and painfully at times. 1.4 to 1.6: Solid adder: well above-average (top 10%) by software-industry standards, but average (at 5-10 years’ experience) in the context of the best companies (e.g. elite startups, Google, and research divisions of IBM). Can be trusted to independently solve most problems in an elegant and maintainable way. Engineer can make reasonable time estimates and communicate in both business and technical terms with management as well as other engineers. Can handle small levels of deadline/delivery responsibility and should be encouraged to participate in architectural decisions (“multiplier” concerns). Technical leadership non-urgent projects is a serious possibility. That's average base level in my book. And sometimes I mess up on those too. (Communication being a big bug bear for me)

chris_j 14y ago
Thanks very much for the information; I had completely missed that particular meme until now.
Kiro 14y ago
I'm a PHP developer who often uses w3schools as reference. What score do I get?
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  I don't know. You are on HN so it's a good guess its productive. You know enough to know PhP and w3schools indicates there is more to learn and so I would guess you are on the right path As for everything else - I don't know till I read your code
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  No idea, but there are certain semi-discrete barriers that I've noticed: 0.8: difficulty with fundamentals. There are people out there who just can't get code to compile, or struggle with core concepts like pointers and recursion. 1.2: corporate work frontier. Large "commodity programmer" teams tend to focus more on creating a home (slight, reliable, adder status) for a large number of mediocre players than on developing talent. Most jobs won't take you far beyond 1.1-1.2; even the team leads in most corporate shops tend to be only 1.3-1.4. 1.8: escalating difficulty of getting appropriate projects. You can get to 1.5, 1.6 through side projects, book reading, and exploration in your spare hours. It's quite rare, however, that people get to 2.0 without having the (very uncommon) opportunity to do 2.0+ level work full-time. To push beyond 1.8, you need to get more autonomy in your job than most programmers ever have.